Yahoo's New Rules

With Yahoo’s new search engine comes a new set of rules. In case you didn’t know, Yahoo no longer uses Google to drive web search results. They’re using their own search engine, and they’ve combined it with their anti-spam technology to really crack down on sites that use anything resembling questionable tactics.

If you:

Duplicate the same content across multiple sites.

Use a lot of flamboyant language on your site (like ‘Great deals here!’).

Use other tricks like hidden frames or content.

Then you will likely run afoul of their new rules. Be especially aware of duplicate content, or anything that even resembles duped content. Rumor has it that Yahoo is now inspecting all top-10 results sites, by hand, for duped or almost-duped content. That means that just changing a few words here and there won’t help you stay legit.

You can read this article to learn a bit more. A lot of this is conjecture, but beware – Yahoo is now a sizable chunk of Internet search traffic. Can you afford to gamble?

Ian Lurie is CEO and founder of Portent and the EVP of Marketing Services at Clearlink. He's been a digital marketer since the days of AOL and Compuserve (25 years, if you're counting). He's recorded training for Lynda.com, writes regularly for the Portent Blog and has been published on AllThingsD, Smashing Magazine, and TechCrunch.
Ian speaks at conferences around the world, including SearchLove, MozCon, Seattle Interactive Conference and ad:Tech. He has published several books about business and marketing: One Trick Ponies Get Shot, available on Kindle, The Web Marketing All-In-One Desk Reference for Dummies, and Conversation Marketing.
Follow him on Twitter at portentint, and on LinkedIn at LinkedIn.com/in/ianlurie.